Reinhardt is regarded as one of the greatest guitar players of all time; he was the first important European jazz musician who made major contributions to the development of the guitar genre. After his fourth and fifth fingers were paralyzed when he suffered burns in a fire, Reinhardt used only the index and middle finger of his left hand on his solos. He created an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique (sometimes called 'hot' jazz guitar), which has since become a living musical tradition within French Gypsy culture. With violinist Stéphane Grappelli, Reinhardt co-founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France, described by critic Thom Jurek as "one of the most original bands in the history of recorded jazz".[5] Reinhardt's most popular compositions have become jazz standards, including "Minor Swing", "Daphne", "Belleville", "Djangology", "Swing '42", and "Nuages".

Jean "Django" Reinhardt[1] was born 23 January 1910 in Liberchies, Pont-à-Celles, Belgium,[6][7] into a French family of Manouche Romani descent.[3][7] His father was named Jean Eugene Weiss, but used the alias "Jean-Baptiste Reinhard"[verification needed] on the birth certificate to hide from French military conscription.[8] His mother, Laurence Reinhardt, was a dancer.[8] The birth certificate refers to: « Jean Reinhart, son of Jean Baptiste Reinhart, artist, and Laurence Reinhart, housewife, domiciled in Paris ».[9] Reinhardt's nickname "Django", in Romani means "I awake."[10] Reinhardt spent most of his youth in Romani encampments close to Paris, where he started playing violin, banjo, and guitar. His family made cane furniture for a living, but its members included several keen amateur musicians.[11]

Reinhardt was attracted to music at an early age, first playing the violin. At the age of 12, he received a banjo-guitar as a gift. He quickly learned to play, mimicking the fingerings of musicians he watched. His first known recordings, made in 1928, were of him playing the banjo. By age 13, Reinhardt was able to make a living playing music. He received little formal education and acquired the rudiments of literacy only in adult life.[12]

At age 18 in 1928 in Saint-Ouen, Seine-Saint-Denis, Reinhardt was injured in a fire which ravaged the caravan he shared with Florine "Bella" Mayer, his first wife.[13] They were very poor, and to supplement their income, Bella made imitation flowers out of celluloid and paper. Returning from a performance late one night, Reinhardt apparently knocked over a candle on his way to bed, igniting these highly flammable materials. While his family and neighbours were quick to pull him to safety, he received first- and second-degree burns over half his body. His right leg was paralysed, and the fourth and fifth fingers of his left hand were badly burned. Doctors believed that he would never play guitar again and intended to amputate one of his legs.[14] Reinhardt refused to have the surgery and left the hospital after a short time; he was able to walk within a year with the aid of a cane.

His brother Joseph Reinhardt, also an accomplished guitarist, bought Django a new guitar. With rehabilitation and practice, he relearned his craft in a completely new way, even as his fourth and fifth fingers remained partially paralysed. He played all his guitar solos with only two fingers, and used the two injured digits only for chord work.[15]

In 1929, Reinhardt's estranged wife Florine gave birth to a son named Henri "Lousson" Reinhardt.[16]

The years between 1929 and 1933 were formative musically for Reinhardt. One development was his abandonment of the guitjo in favour of the guitar. He first heard American jazz during this period, when acquaintance Émile Savitry played him a number of records from his collection: he was particularly impressed with Louis Armstrong, whom he called "my brother".[17] Shortly afterwards Reinhardt met Stéphane Grappelli, a young violinist with very similar musical interests. In the absence of paid work in their radical new music, the two would jam together, along with a loose circle of other musicians.[18] Finally, Reinhardt acquired his first Selmer guitar in the mid-1930s. He used the volume and expressiveness of the instrument as integral to his style.

In Paris on 14 March 1933, Reinhardt recorded two takes each of "Parce-que je vous aime" and "Si, j'aime Suzy", vocal numbers with lots of guitar fills and guitar support. He used three guitarists along with an accordion lead, violin, and bass. In August 1934, he made other recordings with more than one guitar (Joseph Reinhardt, Roger Chaput, and Django), including the first recording by the Quintette. In both years, it should be noted, the great majority of their recordings featured a wide variety of horns, often in multiples, piano, and other instruments.[21] But, the all-string format is the one most often adopted by emulators of the Hot Club sound.

Decca Records in the U.S.A. released three records of Quintette songs with Reinhardt on guitar, and one other labeled "Stephane Grappelly & His Hot 4 with Django Reinhardt" in 1935.[22]

Reinhardt also played and recorded with many American jazz musicians, such as Adelaide Hall, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, and Rex Stewart (who later stayed in Paris). He participated in a jam-session and radio performance with Louis Armstrong. Later in his career, Reinhardt played with Dizzy Gillespie in France. Reinhardt and the Hot Club of France used the Selmer Maccaferri, the first commercially available guitars with a cutaway and later with an aluminium-reinforced neck. In 1937, American jazz singer Adelaide Hall opened a nightclub, 'La Grosse Pomme,' in Montmartre with her husband Bert Hicks. She sang there nightly and hired the Quintette du Hot Club de France as one of the house bands.[23][24] Also in the neighbourhood was the artistic salon R-26, at which Reinhardt and Grappelli performed regularly as they developed their unique musical style.[25]

When World War II broke out, the original quintet was on tour in the United Kingdom. Reinhardt returned to Paris at once,[26] leaving his wife in the UK. Grappelli remained in the United Kingdom for the duration of the war. Reinhardt reformed the quintet, with Hubert Rostaing on clarinet replacing Grappelli's violin.[27]

In 1943, Reinhardt married Sophie "Naguine" Ziegler in Salbris. They had a son, Babik Reinhardt, who later became a respected guitarist in his own right.[27]

Reinhardt survived the war unscathed, unlike many Gypsies who were interned and killed in the Porajmos, the Nazi regime's systematic murder of several hundred thousand European Gypsies. Aware of the risk, he made several unsuccessful attempts to escape from occupied France with his family. He survived in part due to protection of surreptitiously jazz-loving Germans, such as Luftwaffe officer Dietrich Schulz-Köhn, nicknamed "Doktor Jazz".[28]

The Nazis officially disapproved of jazz.[29] Reinhardt tried to develop other musical directions. He tried to write a Mass for the Gypsies and a Symphony (he worked with an assistant to notate what he was improvising). His modernist piece, Rhythm Futur, was intended to be acceptable.

Reinhardt and Duke Ellington at the Aquarium in New York, c. November 1946

After the war, Reinhardt rejoined Grappelli in the UK. In the autumn of 1946, he made his first tour in the United States, debuting at Cleveland Music Hall[30] as a special guest soloist with Duke Ellington and His Orchestra. He played with many notable musicians and composers such as Maury Deutsch. At the end of the tour, Reinhardt played two nights at Carnegie Hall in New York City; he received a great ovation and took six curtain calls on the first night. Despite Reinhardt's great pride in touring with Ellington (one of his two letters to Grappelli relates his excitement), he was not fully integrated into the band. He played a few tunes at the end of the show, backed by Ellington, with no special arrangements written for him. After the tour, Reinhardt secured an engagement at Café Society Uptown, where he played four solos a day, backed by the resident band. These performances drew large audiences.[31]

Reinhardt was reportedly given an untuned guitar to play, which took him five minutes to tune[when?][where?]. Having failed to take along a Selmer Modèle Jazz, which he had made famous, he had to play on a borrowed electric guitar. He was unable to express the delicacy of his style.[32]

He had been promised some jobs in California but these failed to develop. Tired of waiting, Reinhardt returned to France in February 1947.[33]

After his return, Reinhardt became re-immersed in Gypsy life, finding it difficult to adjust to the postwar world. He sometimes showed up for scheduled concerts without a guitar or amplifier, or wandered off to the park or beach. On a few occasions he refused to get out of bed. Reinhardt developed a reputation among his band, fans, and managers as being extremely unreliable. He skipped sold-out concerts to "walk to the beach" or "smell the dew".[34] During this period he continued to attend the R-26 artistic salon in Montmartre, improvising with his devoted collaborator, Stéphane Grappelli.[35][36]

In Rome in 1949, Reinhardt recruited three Italian jazz players (on bass, piano, and snare drum) and recorded his final (double) album, Djangology. He was united with Grappelli, and used his acoustic Selmer-Maccaferri. The recording was discovered in the late 1950s, when it was issued for the first time.[37]

In 1951, Reinhardt retired to Samois-sur-Seine, near Fontainebleau, where he lived until his death. He continued to play in Paris jazz clubs and began playing electric guitar. (He often used a Selmer fitted with an electric pickup, despite his initial hesitation about the instrument.) His final recordings made with his "Nouvelle Quintette" in the last few months of his life show him moving in a new musical direction; he had assimilated the vocabulary of bebop and fused it with his own melodic style.[38]

While walking from the Avon railway station after playing in a Paris club, he collapsed outside his house from a brain hemorrhage.[39] It was a Saturday and it took a full day for a doctor to arrive.[40] Reinhardt was declared dead on arrival at the hospital in Fontainebleau at the age of 43.

Reinhardt's second son, Babik, became a guitarist in the contemporary jazz style. His first son, Lousson, was more of a traditionalist. He followed the Romani lifestyle and rarely performed in public. After Django died, his brother Joseph at first swore to abandon music, but he was persuaded to perform and record again. Joseph's son Markus Reinhardt is a violinist in the Romani style.

A third generation of direct descendants has developed as musicians: David Reinhardt, Reinhardt's grandson (by his son Babik), leads his own trio. Dallas Baumgartner, a grandson by Lousson, is a guitarist who travels with the Romani and keeps a low public profile.

Django had a cousin, Schnuckenack Reinhardt,[41] who was a violinist. Schnuckenack lived in Germany, and the two never met. Many of his descendants, such as his grandson Lulo Reinhardt, are also involved in gypsy music.

For about a decade after Reinhardt's death, interest in his musical style was minimal. In the fifties, bebop superseded swing in jazz, rock and roll took off, and electric instruments became dominant in popular music. Reinhardt's friends and sidemen, such as Pierre Ferret and his brothers, continued to perform their own version of gypsy swing.

Since the mid-sixties, there has been a revival of interest in Reinhardt's music. Acoustic music was revived with the folk movement. Several of Reinhardt's near-contemporaries, such as Paul "Tchan Tchou" Vidal, recorded for the first time in the sixties and seventies.

Boulou Ferré, son of "Matelot" Ferret, was a child prodigy who entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 13, and studied under Olivier Messiaen. He continues to perform with his brother Elios; they can mix bebop and classical music with gypsy swing. Biréli Lagrène and Angelo Debarre were other prodigies.

Most of the above-mentioned are Roma who learned music by the 'gypsy method', involving intense practice, direct imitation of older musicians (often family members) and playing by ear, with little formal musical study. Since the late 1970s, workshops, books and videos have become available, allowing musicians worldwide to master the style.

Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi recounted that he suffered an industrial accident at 17, and lost the tips of two fingers. His boss played a Django Reinhardt record to inspire him to pursue his dream of being a guitarist.[43]

Reinhardt's music used in the 1978 film King of the Gypsies (film), and his long-time friend Stéphane Grappelli appeared in the film in a cameo performing as a violinist in a gypsy band. In the Martin Scorsese film, Hugo, 2011, a character who is credited as Reinhardt plays guitar in a combo in the station café. The character identified as Django is played by Emil Lager.

The Belgian government issued a commemorative coin in 92.5% sterling silver in 2010 coinciding with his 100th birth anniversary. It is a silver 10 Euro coin with a color image of Django Reinhardt on the reverse side.[46]

Many guitar players, and musicians, have expressed admiration for Django Reinhardt, or have cited him as a major influence. Jeff Beck has described Reinhardt as "By far the most astonishing guitar player ever..." and "...quite superhuman..."[47]

Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia and Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi, both of whom lost fingers in accidents, were inspired by Reinhardt's example of becoming an accomplished guitar player/musician, despite his injuries. Jerry Garcia was quoted in June 1985 in Frets Magazine:

"His technique is awesome! Even today, nobody has really come to the state that he was playing at. As good as players are, they haven’t gotten to where he is. There’s a lot of guys that play fast and a lot of guys that play clean, and the guitar has come a long way as far as speed and clarity go, but nobody plays with the whole fullness of expression that Django has. I mean, the combination of incredible speed – all the speed you could possibly want – but also the thing of every note have a specific personality. You don’t hear it. I really haven’t heard it anywhere but with Django".

"Django," an instrumental guitar piece by renowned blues-rock guitarist Joe Bonamassa, is in his honour. The piece was influenced by the violin introduction of "Vous et Moi" (Blues et Mineur, 1942, Brussels), in which Reinhardt played the violin. Vous et Moi (You and Me) became the title of Bonamassa's sixth album, where the track first appeared in 2006. Slightly longer live versions appear on LIVE...From Nowhere in Particular (2009), and in DVD from his 4 May concert at Royal Albert Hall.

"Django," composed by John Lewis, has become a jazz standard performed by musicians such as Miles Davis. The Modern Jazz Quartet titled one of their albums Django in his honour.

^ abHis official forename was not "Jean-Baptiste" as often cited. The name on his birth certificate is "Reinhardt, Jean". His biographer Michael Dregni states that "Jean Reinhardt" is the name used on all official documents. Dregni, Michael (2004). Django: The Life and Music of a Gypsy Legend. Oxford University Press. pp. 4–5. ISBN0-19-516752-X.